Front Man

How do You
Imagine Jesus?

(If You do at all.
I understand.
He’s been kidnapped
by some Unsavory Types,
who want to pose Him
as a Judicial Officer.)

Maybe You see Him
surrounded by Kids,
crawling all over Him,
braiding dandelions
into His beard, or

Maybe You see Him
making sure
there’s enough wine
at the Party, or

cracking jokes
with a bunch of
Derelicts
hanging out
in the Park, where
He brings Them lunch
every day, or

Walking on Water,
daring His Followers
to join Him, or

pulling more lunches
out of thin air,
after hugging
The Little Guy who hoped
His Five Pieces of Bread and
Two Fishes would be
enough for five-thousand
Hungry Listeners.

How about this:

Could You see Him
as the Front Man and
Lead Guitarist
for an Indie Rock Band,
bouncing around and
flipping His long hair and
covering “Dreams”
by The Cranberries?

Why not?

(Photo by Joel Muniz; UnSplash)

 

The Fire of Love

I dreamed I was
in The Hereafter,
where it turns out
One can sign up
for Classes to
satisfy One’s Eternal
Thirst for Adventure.

I signed up for
The Fire of Love.

I showed up for
the first session
with My backpack of
Student supplies and
My Diary of Lessons Learned.

There was an Angel
posted at the Door,
Who required
I Surrender
My pack, to be searched.

I was stunned.
Did They Fear Someone
would sneak in a weapon?

“Oh, no,”
The Bright One laughed,
“but We must search
Your Diary.”
I handed It over and
some loose leaf pages
fell to the floor.

The Angel scooped them up.
I had titled them
“A Comprehensive List of
My Wrongdoings.”

“Follow Me,” She said,
and led me outside
to a Group
warming Themselves
at a dancing Fire.

We joined Them
and She
handed Me
My List.

“We call This
the Fire of Love.

“You do the Honor.”

(Photo by Jim Chesek; UnSplash)

 

Fender Bender

Let’s say
You’re on
a Road Trip.

A one-hundred proof
Intoxication of
an Adventure,
with stops at
Disneyland and
Mardi Gras in New Orleans and
Broadway in NYC and
the Lincoln Memorial in DC and
the Grand Canyon and …
fill in Your own
Daydreams.

But what if
Your Car
broke down in Abilene
and cost you
a day-or-three or
you dinged up a fender
on a snowy day
in Santa Fe?

What will You
Remember
a Year or so
from now?

The fender-bender
in November or
Thanksgiving Dinner
at the Cowgirl BBQ?

Would You
Identify with Your Car,
or When You
Wished Upon a Star?

I’ll grant You
It’s not quite
the Same,
but I Wonder if

Sometimes
My Forever Soul,
on this
Roadtrip of a Lifetime,
has to Laugh

at how much
I Furrow My Brow,
Worried about
How Well I’m Driving
This Four-Limbed
Fleshmobile.

(Photo by Markus Spiske; UnSplash)

 

The Scorekeeper

Do You have
a Scorekeeper?

Every One is Different,
but They Do
The Same Old Thing:

They Record Your
Approval Rating,
one Button for
When Your Little
Old Self
does Something
that stacks up Well
against Whatever
Score You’ve
Programmed The Thing
with as Being
Deserving,
another Button for
when You’re Feeling
Anything But Deserving.

This Morning
My Scorekeeper
was Stuck on
Undeserving –
there was
So Much Evidence –

When I Had
a Knock On My Heart.

My Creator
and a Few of
My Light Being Love Posse
stopped by for
A Chat.

They demanded
I Surrender
My Scorekeeper.

Then They
drew straws,
Howling with Glee,
to See

Who had The Honor of
Heaving
That Thing
so Far It
landed in
The Garbage Dump,

Where It will
likely be
Recycled into
Safety Pins
for a Child’s
diapers.

Then We had
A Group Hug.

(Photo by Duy Pham; UnSplash)

 

Cosmic Co-op

Do You understand
You are a Member of
a Cosmic
Co-operative of Artists?

Formed when
The Original Artist
Burst into
a Billion Fractals of Light,
Each with a
Singular Assignment:

Help Create Your Place
in The Cosmos
with the
Art Supplies
of Human Form and
Mother Earth Materials.

What The Creator
has in Mind
has been Planted
in Your Soul
from The Beginning,
a Work of Art
to Stun the Stars
Who Watch You Work.

But, You Must
Transcend the Fear

of Failure,
of No Talent,
of Competing with
Other Geniuses
(You Are One),
of Dying before
You Finish.
(No Worries,
You Will Live Forever.)

You have Two Tasks:

Create Your Genius Art
and Help Your Fellow
Painters and Writers,
Singers and Dancers,
Dream Makers and
Crafters of Every
Piece of
The Creator’s Imagination,
to Master Their Fears.

Together You Will Fill
The Louvre of Love.

(Photo By Amy Leigh Bernard; UnSplash)

 

The Veil

It’s as if
Your Soul is a Painting
of astonishing Beauty,
One-of-a-Kind
from the Creator’s Brush.

Then Your Soul is
Hidden,
beneath a thin Veneer
of Canvas –
call it The Veil –

and You,
an Artist Your Self,
Offspring of
The Creator,
are handed
Brushes and Palette and Paint
and Your Creator
invites You to
Make Your Soul
a Work of Art,

but Casts a Spell
whereby You forget
What lies Beneath
the Veneer.

Perhaps the First Time
You Make a Mess of It.

Or, You Surrender
Your Brushes
to Others
You deem Better Artists
than You.
Who Make of You
a Portrait
You don’t even
Recognize.

Or You may Create
a Thing of Beauty.

But, after a Time,
You Return
with Your Painting,
to The Creator,
Who carefully
removes the Veneer
and hangs it in
The Gallery of Soulful Art.

Then, if You Wish,
another Veil
is carefully applied
over the Eternal Beauty of
Your Soul,
The One Painted by
The Creator.

And so it goes,
as many times
as You Wish.

But the Time may come,
when The Light
is Right,
that You See
through The Veil,
and Your Joyful Task
becomes to
Use Your Brushes
to Reveal
The Perfect Beauty
that lies
Beneath The Veneer.

(Photo by Frankie Cordoba; UnSplash)

 

Globalism

When I was a Child
I was given
a Globe,
small enough to
hold in My hands.

Inside was God.

Outside was Everything Else.

My Task
of a Lifetime
was to get inside
The Globe
with God
and
leave The World
Outside.

Except, perhaps,
to convince
a Few Others
to get
God Globes
of Their Own.

We God Globalists
Knew that
All that would
Survive
The Coming Catastrophe
must be
In a Globe.
All Else would Perish.

A few years ago
I dropped
My Globe and
It Shattered.

Love spilled
Everywhere.

It’s possible
I’m not
too Old
to Learn
How To
Spread It Around.

Oh, Also:

There’s a Globe
I’m just now
Seeing.
There seems to be
No End to It.

As Near as
I can tell,

It Contains
Everything.

(Photo by Greg Rakozy; UnSplash)

 

How Would You Feel?

How would You Feel
if You were persuaded
beyond
any Reasonable Doubt
that

The You that is
You –
call it Your Soul –
transcends
by Light Years in Space and
Millennia in Time

that cute little
Biped You
sometimes Believe
You’re confined to.

If You knew
the Light that is
Streaming You
is The Same Light
that Birthed
Your Beaming,
and
It’s All One Light,

and The Light
is measured by
Units of
Love, Joy, Peace and
Laughter,

not so much by
carefully conducted
Experiments
in the Efficacy of
Thoughts,

Would You consider
conducting
Experiments
in the Efficacy of
Asking Your
Soul,

How Do You
Feel?

(Photo by Bianca Berndt; UnSplash)

 

Spooky

You know about
“Spooky Action
At a Distance,”
right?

Wherein the
Mechanics Who
tinker with
Entangled Quantums

discovered that
if You Tickle
a Pet Particle
Here,
another Pet Particle,
at an Imagined
Infinite Distance,
also Giggles,

as if They are
The Same Creature.

What if It’s True that
The Infinite Lover,
Who Launched You
into The Infinite,
in a
Burst of Light,

Who sometimes seems to
Love
at an Infinite Distance,

Laughs with You,
when Tickled by
Your Experience,

as if They are
actually You?

(Photo by National Cancer Institute: UnSplash)

 

Mission Possible

I was taught that
My Mission
is to
Worship and Obey
The Creator,

but I’ve since
come to believe
that’s some sort of
scrivener’s error,

since The Love
that spawned
a trillion Fractals
from Its Light,
including
You and Me,
burns on Love,
not bruised knees and
smudged foreheads
from bowing down.

Then I believed
that Love
sent Us here
to some sort of
Earth School of
Hard Knocks,

to Learn to
fend off
gut punches of Fear
with the Embrace
of Love,

a step in
The Right Direction
I suppose.

But now I’m
Wondering if
there’s Something
that transcends
earning a Black Belt in
Divine Self-Defense.

I’m learning that
My Soul
is connected to
The Mystery,
and
In The Mystery
there is
what Some call
Heaven,

and I’m beginning to
Believe that
My Mission,
if I choose to accept it,
is to
Follow My Soul
Into The Mystery,
gather up armloads
of Heaven,
and bring them
Down to Earth.

(Photo by Nghia Le; UnSplash)